"Lucky fans" go to collect! "Sherlock Holmes and the Unconscious Detective" takes you through the charm of psychoanalysis

How does Sherlock Holmes's detective story coincide with the methods and strategies of psychoanalysis? Why does the opening plot of "Blood Letter Research" already predict the future fate of the protagonist? Why is "The Soldier with White Skin" a psychoanalytic secular investigation? What are the "archetypes" in the psychoanalytic context of The Bohemian Scandal?

Sherlock Holmes's book lovers can find a different interpretation in this new book.

Recently, the new book "Sherlock Holmes and the Unconscious Detective" published by Guangxi Normal University Press is listed, and the content of the whole book involves almost all Sherlock Holmes detective stories, and "Fu Fan" is worth reading and collecting!

In this book, the famous French psychoanalyst Patrick Avnara starts from the creative and research process of Conan Doyle and Sigmund Freud, showing how they became world-renowned detective novelists, pioneers of psychoanalysis, and exploring the origin and flow of the concept of "unconscious" on the basis of a detailed analysis of The Detective Sherlock Holmes.

He selected many psychoanalytic passages and details from the Complete Detective Sherlock Holmes to interpret the detective novel in a psychoanalytic way, which not only runs through the formation of Freud's personal thoughts, but also integrates various concepts and analytical techniques of psychoanalysis.

Under the author's ingenious writing, the fictional sherlock Holmes story and Freud's real life of thought are intertwined, interpreting and contrasting with each other, and becoming texts of great psychoanalytic value.

The author Afnara has many years of clinical analysis experience, and his books are always good at skillfully integrating clinical practice, psychoanalytic theory and humanistic interests, so that readers can appreciate the charm of psychoanalysis in a wide range of humanistic readings such as literature and art.

Mr. Avnara, with his clinical experience and writings, tells us that psychoanalysis is a world of infinite breadth and depth. In this professional and cross-border work, the author presents a unique way to study psychoanalysis to psychoanalytic researchers and enthusiasts, and also shows another way to open the story of Sherlock Holmes for Sherlock Holmes fans around the world, which can be called the psychoanalytic version of Sherlock Holmes Detective!

About the author

Patrick Avrane (1946-) is a well-known French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and author. Former president of the Freudian Psychoanalytic Association (SPF) in France, and current editor-in-chief of the academic journal SPF Newsletter. Afnara's works are mostly written from familiar themes such as literary images and famous people, and present the wonderful points of psychoanalysis with ingenious ideas. He is the author of "Listening Moments: Children in psychoanalysis rooms", "House: When the Unconscious Is Present", "Money: From Zola to Psychoanalysis", "Portraits of Grandparents: A Family Story", "The Sadness of Love: A Moment of Truth", etc.

Translator Introduction

Translated by | Jiang Yu, Ph.D. in Psychoanalysis from the University of Paris VII. He is currently a teacher at the School of Humanities at Southeast University. Clinical psychoanalyst of the Freudian Psychoanalytic Society (SPF) in France, member of the Lacanology Group of the Chinese Psychoanalytic Professional Committee, analyst of Chengdu Psychoanalysis Center, deputy secretary-general of the Psychoanalytic Professional Committee of the Jiangsu Mental Health Association. His translations include Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis of Children, Psychology of Intelligence, Triumph of Religion (the above is a co-translation), and Dordo 100%.

The translator is | Huang Keke, a Ph.D. student majoring in translation theory and practice in the French Department of Nanjing University, who has translated "Philosophy Can't Bring Happiness" and "Listening Moment: Children in the Psychoanalysis Room" (co-translation).

Wonderful book excerpts

Chinese edition order

At the end of the 19th century, London, the capital of the British Empire, was born in 1859 and practiced medicine here. He was a young doctor and a Catholic who practiced medicine in a Christian country. The clinic was snubbed, and he had a lot of leisure time, so he used to write novels to pass the time. The Study of Blood Letters was published in 1887, the first appearance of Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson. New characters were born. This detective earned his creator a big name. Since then, their adventures have spread around the world, transcending the borders of the British Empire.

During the same period, Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was born in 1856 and practiced medicine here by Sigmund Freud. He was also a young doctor and Jewish, but practiced medicine in a Catholic country. He broke with traditional medicine. In 1899, he published The Analysis of Dreams, the first psychoanalytic study. Since then, Sigmund Freud's life has been integrated with his many discoveries. The psychoanalyst, the character he created, gradually became famous and transcended Austria's borders.

Coincidences are no accidents. Linking the fates of these two people is not a simple telepathic game. Arthur Conan Doyle and Sigmund Freud were both doctors, so they were both concerned with human suffering. They were all trained in the rationalism that prevailed in that era, and were already familiar with solving the common problems of the time. They settled in the center of their respective empires and were well aware of all the latest inventions and discoveries of the time. They do not worship religious deities, and their family's religion is different from that of their settlement, which may help them transcend traditional beliefs. Their quest for truth requires a new practice, a new profession. Sherlock Holmes is not only a fictional character, but also the archetype of the modern investigator, which many police officers acknowledge. Holmes said: "I have my own profession, probably unique in the world. He added that some desperate cases were sent over, "just as doctors sometimes send their incurable patients to the charlatan." Both of these assertions fit Well for Sigmund Freud: early in his career, he received women with hysteria, whose ailments, were ineffective in treating them with other methods.

Listen carefully to the people who come to consult, understand their requests, and discover hidden things by analyzing some seemingly insignificant signs. In the West, detectives and psychoanalysts were part of ancient priestly traditions such as divination and oracles. However, unlike the latter, they are not dependent on God and do not depend on any religious belief. Arthur Conan Doyle and Sigmund Freud, two children of 19th-century scientism, were very secular. The solution is not to resort to any other shore, but to use a mature technology, a technology that has been proven in every way.

In 1950, Gao Luopei, a Dutch diplomat who was fascinated by Chinese culture, published a series of detective novels about Di Gong. The prototype of this character is Di Renjie, a scholar of the Tang Dynasty. In China, detective stories about him were already the main material for the creation of novels in the 18th century. Essentially, this ancient inquisitor's model of work bears a resemblance to the one described by Arthur Conan Doyle. But the difference is that the dimension we define today as fantasy is evident in Di Renjie's story: he will encounter some ghosts, especially those of the victims; He also dreamed, but it was the dead, the ghosts that existed in the legend, who gave him dreams and showed him some information. The methods of Freud or Holmes are completely broken with this idea. When the protagonist dreams, their dreams are their own. The dead or the soul do not bring them anything, these dreams belong to the dreamer, these dreams are the words of the subject, these dreams bear witness to the unconscious desires of the person. If the ghosts appear, it is not the ghosts of the dead floating out of their graves, not the dead souls gaining form, but the vanished conscious or unconscious memories disturbing the subject. This is of course a reality, but it is a spiritual reality; It is fanciful, not ghostly.

Thus we can read from the adventures of Sherlock Holmes the source of psychoanalysis's vitality, which have a secular dimension. What may be important may not be the mystery solved, but the necessary actions taken to solve the mystery, the necessary actions to be carried out in order to cure (not just investigate) to be carried out. The stories of Conan Doyle can be interpreted as figurative representations of psychoanalytic dynamics.

However, the writer created a fictional figure, and Freud invented a practice that had spread throughout the world through psychoanalysts. The former did not face the reality of a policeman (to be precise, he tried to do so, but did not succeed), but the latter was driven by a clinical urgency, and he never stopped revising the theory, so that today, we are still in the process of revising the theory. At this point, the two Creators parted ways. Arthur Conan Doyle left the scientific logic of the protagonist of his novel and began to believe in ghosts, mediums, and communication with wandering spirits. He became passionate about psychicism. He could forget about the characters he created, those who were full of reason, who were considered to have Freudian rationality. For these figures are merely beings on paper, while psychoanalysts are living beings. Freud's theories were not based on literature, and he never stopped referring to the clinic, which rejected the presence of fairies.

Starting with Jules Verne's The Children of Captain Grant, I tried to illustrate what happened during my first meeting with a psychoanalyst: the expression of a request. Similarly, I understand one of the reasons for the success of Fantastic Travels, which treat readers the same way psychoanalysts treat visitors in their analysis. By reading Daphne Dumurier's Butterfly Dreams, I can better understand the concept of body image. Marcel Proust's Jean Sandey and Over the Garmont House allowed me to sketch the image of the "capacity to exist alone," a concept proposed by the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. Freud always believed that the writer's creation would confirm the discoveries of psychoanalysis, because the discoveries of the writer were always one step ahead of the psychoanalyst.

"But we've got to stop here, or we might actually forget that Harold and Gladiva are just characters in a novel." Freud concluded in his paper on William Jensen's Gladyva. These created characters, who are not people who come to psychoanalysts for consultation, forget this and ignore the fact that something fundamental exists clinically.